This is thoroughly well argued. And brave! Thanks for writing it. I can’t find a single thing to disagree with, which is rare for me! 🙂
I’d add an observation: the pro-Israel position of the right-wing christian nationalists has always bugged the hell out of me. How is supporting Israel’s existence because you believe it (and all Jews) will be destroyed and make your weird end-times fantasies come true NOT antisemitic?
I have a long standing bet that if I could take 100 randomly selected Americans, ages 14-74, varied races, religions, and cultures and took them to live in Gaza, as a Gazan…..that by the end of 12 months I could have the majority willing to take up arms to kill members of the IDF.
Accordingly, I disagree with your assertion that Hama’s is the primary force educating Gaza’ns to hate Israeli’s. Israel is accomplished at generating hate all on their own. Imagine as an American if our Canadian neighbor determines when we get water, electricity, and food; determines if you get a job that helps pay your bills; decides when you can leave or re-enter our country.
And what if Canada determines if a chronically or critically ill American receives life saving care only found in Canada? And you learn a highly sought medical visa first requires an assessment by Canadian security services. Do you have value as an informant in your daily life and contacts?
As for criticizing Israelis government and being labeled anti-Semitic; this is an old trope used not because it is necessarily valid but because it historically provides the desired outcome for the perpetrator. Just say THAT word and odds are the victim
will self correct and withdraw.
But ….. the times they are changing. A reasonable person of any stripe
understands snipe’ing and killing children with head shots while they play is the street is wrong. This is not Judaism; this is murder by fanatical, immoral government decree.
Americans are genuinely getting better at differentiating between hating a person for their religions views as opposed to hating their support mass murder on scale.
America need to pull away from these Israeli fanatics as quickly as possible. The Netanyahu tent will fold as soon as America cuts the arms supply cord.
Poof! Gone.
And Israel know it and that is why their campaigns of political terror
Inside American politics is so important, well funded, and relentless.
The Israeli lobby’s have been historically successful at stymying American free speech and influencing election outcome by using fear. It’s political terror, plain and simple.
But I’ll say once more - times are changing and Israel is leading the way.
The Palestinians are a Semitic people. The label 'antisemitic' is a corrupt use of language. Also, the original Zionists were secular, not religious. For many of them, their program was a shared homeland with Palestinians, based in their shared regional cultural heritage -- the Palestinians, like the Jews, being particularly more educated on the whole than the populations of neighboring lands.
The current government of Israel is fascist, with a totally twisted version of Zionism. I'm not Jewish, but I did office work at Yeshiva University for a time. Some of my Jewish coworkers there really didn't like Israelis, for reasons obscure to me at the time. Did this make them 'antisemitic'?
This was an exceptionally well written piece! As a Jew, it captures very well our feelings and thoughts. It has been so hard to explain the nuances between rightful criticism vs antisemitism. We Jews do have a reflexive reaction towards some things after a few millennia of seeing the same movie retold and rebooted for modern audiences. But there have been some egregious actions by Israel that must be called out!
If people understood the difference between the same repackaged antisemitic lines retold, the histories experienced, and instead with discernment called out the correct actual evils )vs the the global Zionist cabal that controls the world, has all the gold, and drinks blood on the weekend), they would see the antisemitic flag thrown a lot less…
I am a Jew, through and through. I easily could have become a rabbi instead of a physician because so much of my "medicine" involved the sentiments, the compassion, and the sensitivity of human life, which I equate with the inner core of most Jews.
"The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations." ~ John Adams
I cannot imagine how anyone could equate the harshest criticism of Netanyahu with being anti-Semitic.
I cannot imagine how anyone could equate how Israeli citizens feel about the destruction of life in Gaza in addition to utterly destroying all of Gaza.
But there are, as is often the case with any subject, caveats.
These caveats go beyond the question is Mike Brock anti-Semitic. For God's sake, don't be absurd. Nothing that Brock has said speaks to anti-Semitism. My only difference with all of Mike's commentary is using the word "Zionism" because it means so many things to people. We typically cloak our arguments with terms that have not been defined.
I was part of a diplomatic mission to the USSR in Oct 1986 after Chernobyl's nuclear accident. I spent an initial three weeks in Moscow and Leningrad, chaperoned two young American "diplomats" who were part of Jampolski and Cirincione's Children As Teachers of Peace (CATOP). We were accompanied by John Denver. These were the days of Reagan vs Gorbachev. The adults on this trip expected to meet Soviets who were our arch-enemies. The Western Press had all of us programmed to expect encounters with evil people. We did not find this to be the reality. Our group, 52 children of various ages, various races and cultures, was greeted like heroes. As our buses pulled into each city, throngs of Soviets cheered us from the streets. The people I met, from the taxi drivers, local professionals, to the local families, were loving, sincere, well-read, and had the same values (love of the family, the child, of Nature, of food and drink, etc.) as everyone else. This was my first exposure to American propaganda. Large vans from CBS and NBC were there but I never heard from anyone that what we experienced was shown to those at home in America.
What is real, what is the truth, is of course the nitty-gritty about everything, but in this case, what has occurred in Gaza. The following are CRUCIAL issues that need to be made absolutely clear.
▶︎ Did indiscriminate bombing of Gaza by Israel's military murder civilians, with many of these civilians being children? I think this is a certainty.
▶︎ Assuming the above to be true, was what has happened in Gaza a demonstration of generations of rage against the non-Jewish population surrounding Israel, or was it simply the act of an authoritarian Netanyahu whose mandate is to stay in power, and waging war is his means to an end? I think the latter is more the case.
Brock's criticism of Netanyahu and the murder of civilians, and the razing of all or most of Gaza is not anti-Semitism.
The wife of a medical colleague, living in Boise, Idaho, in 1984, meeting me, a Jew, for the first Jew she has ever met and no less sitting in her house and having dinner, and asking me, seriously, "Where are your horns?" is not anti-Semitic; it is just plain stupidity.
This is what an AI assistant (Gemini Pro) reported about deaths of children in Gaza.
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) and other humanitarian organizations:Total Children Killed: Over 21,000 children have been reported killed since the conflict began in October 2023.
UN Women Estimates: As of December 2025, UN Women estimated that 16,000 girls were among the fatalities.
Total Casualties: The total death toll in Gaza is reported to be over 72,300, with children accounting for approximately 30–40% of all fatalities.
I have to assume that it would be impossible for anyone, anywhere, to manipulate data to this extent. The Israeli military, under Netanyahu, has murdered many thousands of children. Netanyahu has committed genocide—an unforgiveable sin, or atrocity, that shames all Jews everywhere.
“Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” Stern to Schindler.
Bringing this all together:
Brock being anti-Semitic is as absurd as Trump being a man of integrity.
Netanyahu is a criminal who has committed war crimes, as have Trump, and Putin. Netanyahu has committed genocide, a violation of everything that a Jew is not about.
Zionism needs to be defined and the meaning understood in any discussion. For many Jews, Zionism means something different.
Lastly, speaking for myself, if I were a Palestinian and a bomb murdered my child or any loved one in my family, I would devote my life to revenge. I may be a physician, may be highly educated, but the loss of life of an innocent has me see red. We will never see peace in our lifetimes while such behavior is acceptable. Humankind is an oxymoron. Humans will never achieve happiness when they can snuff out the lives of innocents and not have their hearts and souls ripped apart.
Stephen, you expressed your thoughts and my thoughts very well. My girlfriend is Jewish and my issues aren't with Jewish people, they're with Netanyahu and his fascist criminal regime. You and Mike Brock have expressed my feelings perfectly. Thank you.
Of course, you are correct as usual, Mike, and wise in" the smile of reason".
However , we in the cosseted West are spoiled in our lazy lack of histori al empathy for a provably peaceful and intellectual People pursued, unjustly scapegoated and regularly destroyed through the ages.
It is impossible for us to fully comprehend EXISTENTIAL in their context, that daily grind of never being able to rest psychologically ( and regularly under real and present threat).
To daily exist with the ominous knowledge that hundreds of millions of Islamics, passive & active, are committed religiously to your utter eventual annihilation. That a majority of them live literally next door and exult in any and all disasters which befall you.
The most nihilistic end of days Iranian Islam then uses its radical proxies to subvert and overtake the 'states' which border you and decade after decade provoke and murder you.
Do you go on turning the other cheek until you are literally driven into the sea or nuclear annihilated?
Ask the Civilised British and Yanks with their nightly thousand bomber raids to incinerate the people of the Reich!
Ask what JFK might have had to do!
Ask youself if your own people were under such immediate relentless, historical pressure on your doorstep, would any quarter be given or would you just destroy the aggressve state and salt their fields like the successful for centuries Roman tactic.
Thank you. But! It’s your blog not mine so I will restrict comments to a few. I too am annoyed and troubled by the way the right/left antagonisms are skewed to favor the republicans. I think the alt right antisemites are ignored more often because they are not (so far) the mainstream right whereas more of the mainstream left is comfortable with the formulaic antisemitism that would deprive Israel of its sovereignty as a Jewish nation. This goal is the reason Gaza is now the dem litmus test for election. The right mainly complains of funding Israel. And so does the left.
The hypocrisy of criticizing Israel when almost every majority Muslim nation is much more aptly described as a colonial apartheid theocratic mess with often genocidal behaviors .. is overwhelming and indicates severe antisemitism (sometimes shared by leftist Israelis). Not to mention the fate of women in those places.
Regarding the conditions of fighting and existing in Gaza, I think there has been a lot of fake news. Following it closely in the even-handed Times of Israel, I think I have a better grasp than most who follow other media who have relied mainly on the lying Al Jazeera. When I try to present facts to those under Al Jazeera influence, I am accused of being a baby killer. No rationality. No perspective on all the care taken and lives lost (almost as many again as on 10/7) by IDF to prosecute the war slowly, building by building instead of using indiscriminate bombing. 80% of fatalities were Hamas. Two thirds of Gaza remains intact. And sadly many medical professionals and journalists were actually terrorists or were also terrorists. Ambulances and hospitals were used as their favorite spots. But this is probably considered alternative reality to most.
COGAT oversaw and facilitated the importation of over 3000 calories per individual a day. Hamas often hoarded it and did not prioritize distributing it fairly. Baby formula seems to have been withheld on purpose but most of the pictures of starving children were of children in other conflicts or children suffering from wasting diseases, formerly being treated in Israel. In one case the child had been evacuated to Italy for treatment a month earlier.
“Globalize the intifada,” “by any means necessary,” “from the river to the sea,” are not ambiguous phrases. Most Jews know what this means. The rest … on Qatari payroll? Haaretz was so implicated. Iran exterminated its Marxists when the Islamists took over. After being fellow travelers. Begin with the end in mind: does this hamper or hinder the caliphate?
Thank you, Mike. A core of the antisemitism I've encountered on the left seems to be questioning the very legitimacy of Israel as a modern state. This gets tangled up in the shifting meanings of "Zionism" as often as it involves actual facts about the founding of the state, but the ultimate implication is that the only real "justice for Palestine" is the elimination of the state of Israel. It's a false duality (either Israel exists or Palestine exists), but it is an existential argument, and I believe why antisemitism on the left, among protesting students, say, is perceived as more threatening than the slow-burning form on the right. I so appreciate you laying out the grey ethical complexities of what so many people try to see simply in black and white.
Excellent piece Mike. My girlfriend is Jewish and I support the Jewish people, however I detest Netanyahu and his fascist regime. He is a Jewish trump and a war criminal who's keeping wars going to stay in power and out of prison.
Mike thanks for this writing albeit I have issues with it. First, Hamas was brought into being by Israel itself in order to divide and conquer the Palestinian "state". Israel also made sure that it was funded to the tune of 1 B $/ year by Qatar- not Iran!
Antisemitism: As Netanyahu keeps murdering Palestinians, mostly women and children who had NOTHING to do with 10/7/23 the "antisemitism" is increasing all over the world. Are we surprised? I, for one, am NOT! When Katz says," kill them all" he means it! So do 42% of Israelis! 82% of Israelis also say that it is just fine with them if Palestinians have to be moved from their lands! Now, how does this reflect on the Jews? They are the new Nazis! Except, they are not just Jews- they are Zionists and this is where the problem arises! When I say that I hate Zionists, I mean it. When I say that I hate Schumer and Gillibrand because, they are Zionists and it's been said by Schumer that he will give Israel everything it needs in his Israel First fervor!
You cannot fault anyone but Israel's government and 82% of its people that people across the globe are starting to hate "the Jews".
The country is called PALESTINE! Israel has no right to be there just because "the Jews" got slaughtered by Hitler! England and France "gave" Israel the territory they did not own. You cannot give what is not yours because, that means you are stealing!
Israel has not known PEACE because, all it ever wanted was war! War over territory- for "the greater Israel". War against "the Muslims" who surround all of Palestine. ALL Israelis are indoctrinated from childhood on to hate the Palestinians- check out some of the videos that exist on "settler violence" or videos about "Jewish" kids harassing Palestinian herders....
And, to finish this off, Israel, after the attack on 10/7/23, exercised the "Hannibal Directive" which means killing their own so they can't be taken hostage and become a bargaining chip!
Oh, and the Music Festival was not even supposed to be in that spot so close to the border- it was changed to that position just days before the attack.
There is so much fishy crap involved, so many lies told by Israel that even the person who wrote the definition of "antisemitism" said that he regretted it!
I do not think that criticism of Zionism can be reduced to ritual invocation or its spurious equation with apartheid, racism, Nazism, genocide, or white supremacy. Without a definition of Zionism, it is not clear that at least some of these equations are not accurate. Inasmuch as Zionism is "Jewish self-determination" (absent another definition, we can take them as synonyms), and depending on how much leeway one still gives to a more wholesome theory of Israel in the face of what turned out to be its reality, it may or may not be one or more of these things.
What is Jewish self-determination? There were Zionists in the past who were pluralists and would happily have inhabited the part of the Levant that is now Israel in peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians. But needless to say, they did not win the day, and it seems that the idea, as it has been actually fulfilled, is one of a nation-state, perhaps also a procedural democracy, in which Israeli Jews lay claim to a legally and morally superior status based solely on their religious identity. One often hears about how good Palestinians have it within the borders of Israel, but the fact that they are still second class makes a mockery of this statement, and their treatment within Israel proper does not validate the atrocities Israel has committed against them in the West Bank and Gaza. Could this possibly be an acceptable state of affairs? At any rate, as it exists, it is certainly apartheid, as Jewish and other human rights organizations have noted, and it is not ritualistic or rote to point this out.
One might still think that the old pluralist Zionism could be resurrected, but it would necessarily not be in the form of a Jewish state. It would have to be a secular democracy in which all of its inhabitants enjoyed the same political status and freedom of religion without discrimination. There is some contemporary evidence that former Jewish Zionists (e.g. Miko Peled), many within the younger generation, are abandoning Zionism (thus the war on Tik Tok, among other platforms) precisely because of what it is in practice, not theory, and are adjusting their understanding of what it means to be Jewish either without reference to Israel, or by reimagining it as something other than a nation-state. Of course, Jewish non-Zionists, although a minority, are already there, having long ago renounced the Zionist project - to their credit, in my non-Jewish opinion.
My other observation is about the distinction between explanation and justification. I do not deny that there are victims and perpetrators of atrocities on both sides. I do deny that, because of this fact, it is valid to dispute that Israel has been the overwhelmingly dominant violator of morality and law in this conflict since Israel's inception, and has committed the overwhelmingly dominant and vastly more destructive violence in it, before and after, though especially after, October 7th, no matter how much its apologists will fanatically deny this reality till the end of time regardless of the facts.
I thus also deny that, because there were atrocities committed and victims on both sides, this alters in the least the fact that the relationship between the parties to this conflict is one of oppressor (Israel) and oppressed (Palestine), and I deny that this relationship, whose apartheid structure has been frankly acknowledged by prominent Israelis, entails no difference in how one should morally evaluate the violence (and the violent organizations) on each side even if it comprises atrocities. To hold otherwise is to distort the character of the situation by ”both sidesing” it.
I believe this is true even if there is a difference of opinion within the oppressed population about the most effective or moral way to respond to the oppression. It is unreasonable to expect oppressed people as a whole to get certificates of good resistance behavior before they do what they think is necessary.
This does not mean we are obliged to approve of Hamas’ violence on October 7th, or Hamas as an organization. But I think we are obliged, before we condemn the violence out of hand, to understand it as the violence of the oppressed and reckon with the arguments of observers like Norman Finkelstein who, in assessing October 7th, found the Nat Turner slave rebellion instructive, or Arundati Roy and Omar El Akkad, who said the following, respectively:
“So, this is the part in my speech where I am expected to equivocate to protect myself, my ‘neutrality’, my intellectual standing. This is the part where I am meant to lapse into moral equivalence and condemn Hamas, the other militant groups in Gaza and their ally Hezbollah, in Lebanon, for killing civilians and taking people hostage. And to condemn the people of Gaza who celebrated the Hamas attack. Once that’s done it all becomes easy, doesn’t it? Ah well. Everybody is terrible, what can one do? Let’s go shopping instead…
I refuse to play the condemnation game. Let me make myself clear. I do not tell oppressed people how to resist their oppression or who their allies should be.”
- Arundati Roy
“I have zero right to tell anybody anywhere who lives under occupation and injustice how to resist that occupation and that injustice. There is no acceptable form of resistance in the view of the institutions doing the oppressing. You engage in boycotts, that's economic terrorism. You try to march peacefully, you are shot with the intent to kill and or maimed. You boycott cultural institutions, you are being illiberal. You take up arms, you are a terrorist, and you will be wiped out. All you can do is die. That is your only acceptable form of resistance.”
- Omar El Akkad
In other words, it is unreasonable for distant observers to wring their hands about the violence of the oppressed when it takes mutant forms, and the distinction between explanation and justification seems to collapse or become moot in practice in certain circumstances, even if one may continue to maintain the moral distinction analytically.
This is thoroughly well argued. And brave! Thanks for writing it. I can’t find a single thing to disagree with, which is rare for me! 🙂
I’d add an observation: the pro-Israel position of the right-wing christian nationalists has always bugged the hell out of me. How is supporting Israel’s existence because you believe it (and all Jews) will be destroyed and make your weird end-times fantasies come true NOT antisemitic?
Brilliant and spot on!
I have a long standing bet that if I could take 100 randomly selected Americans, ages 14-74, varied races, religions, and cultures and took them to live in Gaza, as a Gazan…..that by the end of 12 months I could have the majority willing to take up arms to kill members of the IDF.
Accordingly, I disagree with your assertion that Hama’s is the primary force educating Gaza’ns to hate Israeli’s. Israel is accomplished at generating hate all on their own. Imagine as an American if our Canadian neighbor determines when we get water, electricity, and food; determines if you get a job that helps pay your bills; decides when you can leave or re-enter our country.
And what if Canada determines if a chronically or critically ill American receives life saving care only found in Canada? And you learn a highly sought medical visa first requires an assessment by Canadian security services. Do you have value as an informant in your daily life and contacts?
As for criticizing Israelis government and being labeled anti-Semitic; this is an old trope used not because it is necessarily valid but because it historically provides the desired outcome for the perpetrator. Just say THAT word and odds are the victim
will self correct and withdraw.
But ….. the times they are changing. A reasonable person of any stripe
understands snipe’ing and killing children with head shots while they play is the street is wrong. This is not Judaism; this is murder by fanatical, immoral government decree.
Americans are genuinely getting better at differentiating between hating a person for their religions views as opposed to hating their support mass murder on scale.
America need to pull away from these Israeli fanatics as quickly as possible. The Netanyahu tent will fold as soon as America cuts the arms supply cord.
Poof! Gone.
And Israel know it and that is why their campaigns of political terror
Inside American politics is so important, well funded, and relentless.
The Israeli lobby’s have been historically successful at stymying American free speech and influencing election outcome by using fear. It’s political terror, plain and simple.
But I’ll say once more - times are changing and Israel is leading the way.
I second your feeling and you are most likely correct except, Americans will only wait for 1 month max. to want to take up arms.
The Palestinians are a Semitic people. The label 'antisemitic' is a corrupt use of language. Also, the original Zionists were secular, not religious. For many of them, their program was a shared homeland with Palestinians, based in their shared regional cultural heritage -- the Palestinians, like the Jews, being particularly more educated on the whole than the populations of neighboring lands.
The current government of Israel is fascist, with a totally twisted version of Zionism. I'm not Jewish, but I did office work at Yeshiva University for a time. Some of my Jewish coworkers there really didn't like Israelis, for reasons obscure to me at the time. Did this make them 'antisemitic'?
This was an exceptionally well written piece! As a Jew, it captures very well our feelings and thoughts. It has been so hard to explain the nuances between rightful criticism vs antisemitism. We Jews do have a reflexive reaction towards some things after a few millennia of seeing the same movie retold and rebooted for modern audiences. But there have been some egregious actions by Israel that must be called out!
If people understood the difference between the same repackaged antisemitic lines retold, the histories experienced, and instead with discernment called out the correct actual evils )vs the the global Zionist cabal that controls the world, has all the gold, and drinks blood on the weekend), they would see the antisemitic flag thrown a lot less…
Thank you. Holding all of these ideas at once, does not lead to the appropriate, divisive, self-dealing sound-bites.
I am a Jew, through and through. I easily could have become a rabbi instead of a physician because so much of my "medicine" involved the sentiments, the compassion, and the sensitivity of human life, which I equate with the inner core of most Jews.
"The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations." ~ John Adams
I cannot imagine how anyone could equate the harshest criticism of Netanyahu with being anti-Semitic.
I cannot imagine how anyone could equate how Israeli citizens feel about the destruction of life in Gaza in addition to utterly destroying all of Gaza.
But there are, as is often the case with any subject, caveats.
These caveats go beyond the question is Mike Brock anti-Semitic. For God's sake, don't be absurd. Nothing that Brock has said speaks to anti-Semitism. My only difference with all of Mike's commentary is using the word "Zionism" because it means so many things to people. We typically cloak our arguments with terms that have not been defined.
I was part of a diplomatic mission to the USSR in Oct 1986 after Chernobyl's nuclear accident. I spent an initial three weeks in Moscow and Leningrad, chaperoned two young American "diplomats" who were part of Jampolski and Cirincione's Children As Teachers of Peace (CATOP). We were accompanied by John Denver. These were the days of Reagan vs Gorbachev. The adults on this trip expected to meet Soviets who were our arch-enemies. The Western Press had all of us programmed to expect encounters with evil people. We did not find this to be the reality. Our group, 52 children of various ages, various races and cultures, was greeted like heroes. As our buses pulled into each city, throngs of Soviets cheered us from the streets. The people I met, from the taxi drivers, local professionals, to the local families, were loving, sincere, well-read, and had the same values (love of the family, the child, of Nature, of food and drink, etc.) as everyone else. This was my first exposure to American propaganda. Large vans from CBS and NBC were there but I never heard from anyone that what we experienced was shown to those at home in America.
What is real, what is the truth, is of course the nitty-gritty about everything, but in this case, what has occurred in Gaza. The following are CRUCIAL issues that need to be made absolutely clear.
▶︎ Did indiscriminate bombing of Gaza by Israel's military murder civilians, with many of these civilians being children? I think this is a certainty.
▶︎ Assuming the above to be true, was what has happened in Gaza a demonstration of generations of rage against the non-Jewish population surrounding Israel, or was it simply the act of an authoritarian Netanyahu whose mandate is to stay in power, and waging war is his means to an end? I think the latter is more the case.
Brock's criticism of Netanyahu and the murder of civilians, and the razing of all or most of Gaza is not anti-Semitism.
The wife of a medical colleague, living in Boise, Idaho, in 1984, meeting me, a Jew, for the first Jew she has ever met and no less sitting in her house and having dinner, and asking me, seriously, "Where are your horns?" is not anti-Semitic; it is just plain stupidity.
_________________________________________________________________________________
This is what an AI assistant (Gemini Pro) reported about deaths of children in Gaza.
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) and other humanitarian organizations:Total Children Killed: Over 21,000 children have been reported killed since the conflict began in October 2023.
UN Women Estimates: As of December 2025, UN Women estimated that 16,000 girls were among the fatalities.
Total Casualties: The total death toll in Gaza is reported to be over 72,300, with children accounting for approximately 30–40% of all fatalities.
I have to assume that it would be impossible for anyone, anywhere, to manipulate data to this extent. The Israeli military, under Netanyahu, has murdered many thousands of children. Netanyahu has committed genocide—an unforgiveable sin, or atrocity, that shames all Jews everywhere.
“Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” Stern to Schindler.
Bringing this all together:
Brock being anti-Semitic is as absurd as Trump being a man of integrity.
Netanyahu is a criminal who has committed war crimes, as have Trump, and Putin. Netanyahu has committed genocide, a violation of everything that a Jew is not about.
Zionism needs to be defined and the meaning understood in any discussion. For many Jews, Zionism means something different.
Lastly, speaking for myself, if I were a Palestinian and a bomb murdered my child or any loved one in my family, I would devote my life to revenge. I may be a physician, may be highly educated, but the loss of life of an innocent has me see red. We will never see peace in our lifetimes while such behavior is acceptable. Humankind is an oxymoron. Humans will never achieve happiness when they can snuff out the lives of innocents and not have their hearts and souls ripped apart.
Stephen, you expressed your thoughts and my thoughts very well. My girlfriend is Jewish and my issues aren't with Jewish people, they're with Netanyahu and his fascist criminal regime. You and Mike Brock have expressed my feelings perfectly. Thank you.
Of course, you are correct as usual, Mike, and wise in" the smile of reason".
However , we in the cosseted West are spoiled in our lazy lack of histori al empathy for a provably peaceful and intellectual People pursued, unjustly scapegoated and regularly destroyed through the ages.
It is impossible for us to fully comprehend EXISTENTIAL in their context, that daily grind of never being able to rest psychologically ( and regularly under real and present threat).
To daily exist with the ominous knowledge that hundreds of millions of Islamics, passive & active, are committed religiously to your utter eventual annihilation. That a majority of them live literally next door and exult in any and all disasters which befall you.
The most nihilistic end of days Iranian Islam then uses its radical proxies to subvert and overtake the 'states' which border you and decade after decade provoke and murder you.
Do you go on turning the other cheek until you are literally driven into the sea or nuclear annihilated?
Ask the Civilised British and Yanks with their nightly thousand bomber raids to incinerate the people of the Reich!
Ask what JFK might have had to do!
Ask youself if your own people were under such immediate relentless, historical pressure on your doorstep, would any quarter be given or would you just destroy the aggressve state and salt their fields like the successful for centuries Roman tactic.
Thus history serves us its usual dual reality.
Thank you. But! It’s your blog not mine so I will restrict comments to a few. I too am annoyed and troubled by the way the right/left antagonisms are skewed to favor the republicans. I think the alt right antisemites are ignored more often because they are not (so far) the mainstream right whereas more of the mainstream left is comfortable with the formulaic antisemitism that would deprive Israel of its sovereignty as a Jewish nation. This goal is the reason Gaza is now the dem litmus test for election. The right mainly complains of funding Israel. And so does the left.
The hypocrisy of criticizing Israel when almost every majority Muslim nation is much more aptly described as a colonial apartheid theocratic mess with often genocidal behaviors .. is overwhelming and indicates severe antisemitism (sometimes shared by leftist Israelis). Not to mention the fate of women in those places.
Regarding the conditions of fighting and existing in Gaza, I think there has been a lot of fake news. Following it closely in the even-handed Times of Israel, I think I have a better grasp than most who follow other media who have relied mainly on the lying Al Jazeera. When I try to present facts to those under Al Jazeera influence, I am accused of being a baby killer. No rationality. No perspective on all the care taken and lives lost (almost as many again as on 10/7) by IDF to prosecute the war slowly, building by building instead of using indiscriminate bombing. 80% of fatalities were Hamas. Two thirds of Gaza remains intact. And sadly many medical professionals and journalists were actually terrorists or were also terrorists. Ambulances and hospitals were used as their favorite spots. But this is probably considered alternative reality to most.
COGAT oversaw and facilitated the importation of over 3000 calories per individual a day. Hamas often hoarded it and did not prioritize distributing it fairly. Baby formula seems to have been withheld on purpose but most of the pictures of starving children were of children in other conflicts or children suffering from wasting diseases, formerly being treated in Israel. In one case the child had been evacuated to Italy for treatment a month earlier.
“Globalize the intifada,” “by any means necessary,” “from the river to the sea,” are not ambiguous phrases. Most Jews know what this means. The rest … on Qatari payroll? Haaretz was so implicated. Iran exterminated its Marxists when the Islamists took over. After being fellow travelers. Begin with the end in mind: does this hamper or hinder the caliphate?
Well said.
Thank you, Mike. A core of the antisemitism I've encountered on the left seems to be questioning the very legitimacy of Israel as a modern state. This gets tangled up in the shifting meanings of "Zionism" as often as it involves actual facts about the founding of the state, but the ultimate implication is that the only real "justice for Palestine" is the elimination of the state of Israel. It's a false duality (either Israel exists or Palestine exists), but it is an existential argument, and I believe why antisemitism on the left, among protesting students, say, is perceived as more threatening than the slow-burning form on the right. I so appreciate you laying out the grey ethical complexities of what so many people try to see simply in black and white.
Excellent piece Mike. My girlfriend is Jewish and I support the Jewish people, however I detest Netanyahu and his fascist regime. He is a Jewish trump and a war criminal who's keeping wars going to stay in power and out of prison.
Sharing with my subscribers tomorrow.
Mike thanks for this writing albeit I have issues with it. First, Hamas was brought into being by Israel itself in order to divide and conquer the Palestinian "state". Israel also made sure that it was funded to the tune of 1 B $/ year by Qatar- not Iran!
Antisemitism: As Netanyahu keeps murdering Palestinians, mostly women and children who had NOTHING to do with 10/7/23 the "antisemitism" is increasing all over the world. Are we surprised? I, for one, am NOT! When Katz says," kill them all" he means it! So do 42% of Israelis! 82% of Israelis also say that it is just fine with them if Palestinians have to be moved from their lands! Now, how does this reflect on the Jews? They are the new Nazis! Except, they are not just Jews- they are Zionists and this is where the problem arises! When I say that I hate Zionists, I mean it. When I say that I hate Schumer and Gillibrand because, they are Zionists and it's been said by Schumer that he will give Israel everything it needs in his Israel First fervor!
You cannot fault anyone but Israel's government and 82% of its people that people across the globe are starting to hate "the Jews".
The country is called PALESTINE! Israel has no right to be there just because "the Jews" got slaughtered by Hitler! England and France "gave" Israel the territory they did not own. You cannot give what is not yours because, that means you are stealing!
Israel has not known PEACE because, all it ever wanted was war! War over territory- for "the greater Israel". War against "the Muslims" who surround all of Palestine. ALL Israelis are indoctrinated from childhood on to hate the Palestinians- check out some of the videos that exist on "settler violence" or videos about "Jewish" kids harassing Palestinian herders....
And, to finish this off, Israel, after the attack on 10/7/23, exercised the "Hannibal Directive" which means killing their own so they can't be taken hostage and become a bargaining chip!
Oh, and the Music Festival was not even supposed to be in that spot so close to the border- it was changed to that position just days before the attack.
There is so much fishy crap involved, so many lies told by Israel that even the person who wrote the definition of "antisemitism" said that he regretted it!
Peace to you, Mike.
I've read what you've said here, and it's left me wondering if you carefully read what I wrote.
Well done, you're good at this.
I do not think that criticism of Zionism can be reduced to ritual invocation or its spurious equation with apartheid, racism, Nazism, genocide, or white supremacy. Without a definition of Zionism, it is not clear that at least some of these equations are not accurate. Inasmuch as Zionism is "Jewish self-determination" (absent another definition, we can take them as synonyms), and depending on how much leeway one still gives to a more wholesome theory of Israel in the face of what turned out to be its reality, it may or may not be one or more of these things.
What is Jewish self-determination? There were Zionists in the past who were pluralists and would happily have inhabited the part of the Levant that is now Israel in peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians. But needless to say, they did not win the day, and it seems that the idea, as it has been actually fulfilled, is one of a nation-state, perhaps also a procedural democracy, in which Israeli Jews lay claim to a legally and morally superior status based solely on their religious identity. One often hears about how good Palestinians have it within the borders of Israel, but the fact that they are still second class makes a mockery of this statement, and their treatment within Israel proper does not validate the atrocities Israel has committed against them in the West Bank and Gaza. Could this possibly be an acceptable state of affairs? At any rate, as it exists, it is certainly apartheid, as Jewish and other human rights organizations have noted, and it is not ritualistic or rote to point this out.
One might still think that the old pluralist Zionism could be resurrected, but it would necessarily not be in the form of a Jewish state. It would have to be a secular democracy in which all of its inhabitants enjoyed the same political status and freedom of religion without discrimination. There is some contemporary evidence that former Jewish Zionists (e.g. Miko Peled), many within the younger generation, are abandoning Zionism (thus the war on Tik Tok, among other platforms) precisely because of what it is in practice, not theory, and are adjusting their understanding of what it means to be Jewish either without reference to Israel, or by reimagining it as something other than a nation-state. Of course, Jewish non-Zionists, although a minority, are already there, having long ago renounced the Zionist project - to their credit, in my non-Jewish opinion.
My other observation is about the distinction between explanation and justification. I do not deny that there are victims and perpetrators of atrocities on both sides. I do deny that, because of this fact, it is valid to dispute that Israel has been the overwhelmingly dominant violator of morality and law in this conflict since Israel's inception, and has committed the overwhelmingly dominant and vastly more destructive violence in it, before and after, though especially after, October 7th, no matter how much its apologists will fanatically deny this reality till the end of time regardless of the facts.
I thus also deny that, because there were atrocities committed and victims on both sides, this alters in the least the fact that the relationship between the parties to this conflict is one of oppressor (Israel) and oppressed (Palestine), and I deny that this relationship, whose apartheid structure has been frankly acknowledged by prominent Israelis, entails no difference in how one should morally evaluate the violence (and the violent organizations) on each side even if it comprises atrocities. To hold otherwise is to distort the character of the situation by ”both sidesing” it.
I believe this is true even if there is a difference of opinion within the oppressed population about the most effective or moral way to respond to the oppression. It is unreasonable to expect oppressed people as a whole to get certificates of good resistance behavior before they do what they think is necessary.
This does not mean we are obliged to approve of Hamas’ violence on October 7th, or Hamas as an organization. But I think we are obliged, before we condemn the violence out of hand, to understand it as the violence of the oppressed and reckon with the arguments of observers like Norman Finkelstein who, in assessing October 7th, found the Nat Turner slave rebellion instructive, or Arundati Roy and Omar El Akkad, who said the following, respectively:
“So, this is the part in my speech where I am expected to equivocate to protect myself, my ‘neutrality’, my intellectual standing. This is the part where I am meant to lapse into moral equivalence and condemn Hamas, the other militant groups in Gaza and their ally Hezbollah, in Lebanon, for killing civilians and taking people hostage. And to condemn the people of Gaza who celebrated the Hamas attack. Once that’s done it all becomes easy, doesn’t it? Ah well. Everybody is terrible, what can one do? Let’s go shopping instead…
I refuse to play the condemnation game. Let me make myself clear. I do not tell oppressed people how to resist their oppression or who their allies should be.”
- Arundati Roy
“I have zero right to tell anybody anywhere who lives under occupation and injustice how to resist that occupation and that injustice. There is no acceptable form of resistance in the view of the institutions doing the oppressing. You engage in boycotts, that's economic terrorism. You try to march peacefully, you are shot with the intent to kill and or maimed. You boycott cultural institutions, you are being illiberal. You take up arms, you are a terrorist, and you will be wiped out. All you can do is die. That is your only acceptable form of resistance.”
- Omar El Akkad
In other words, it is unreasonable for distant observers to wring their hands about the violence of the oppressed when it takes mutant forms, and the distinction between explanation and justification seems to collapse or become moot in practice in certain circumstances, even if one may continue to maintain the moral distinction analytically.
This is an exhaustive analysis! It is important.
Can you see how Hamas may have been a reaction (reactionary) to decades of Israeli occupation?
Did you read the piece?